East Doc Platform, the industry hub for documentary films hailing from Central and Eastern Europe, has revealed its latest batch of projects. The seventh East Doc Platform, the largest co-production, funding and distribution platform for Central and Eastern European documentaries, has chosen as its theme “New Resistance”, addressing the current rise of nationalistic and totalitarian tendencies in the region. “We hear more and more political voices today calling for the restriction of the critical free press. Countries in this region have a common and a relatively short experience of democracy, which makes independent documentary filmmaking especially vulnerable,” says East Doc Platform manager Tereza Šimíková.

A total of 21 selected projects will get the opportunity to pitch for funding and co-production contributions at East Doc Forum. Among them are Vít Janeček and Zuzana Piussi, the pair behind the controversial documentary Common Sense, with a project called I Love Generals. It revolves around a person called Banyarr, who managed to document the situation in Burmese prisons. His authentic images, seen only by UN representatives, will be incorporated exclusively in the film. Peter Kerekes’ new documentary Wishing on a Star, on “active astrology” and “longing for meaning in a cosmos filled with endless chaos”, is also part of the selection.

East Doc Market, a speed-dating spot for pitching projects in the late stages of production or post-production, will feature Marcin Koszałka’s documentary Flesh, about a patient with a terminal illness who came to terms with it and the taboo of mortality; Srdjan Sarenac’s Beyond the End of the World, about “the untold story of a ten-day international film festival that was staged in Sarajevo during the brutal four-year siege”; and the Romanian project The Other Side of the Medal by Denisa Morariu-Tamas, revisiting the 2000 Olympic Games and a disqualified athlete striving for justice.

The organisers note the growing number of Czech projects, which this year make up one-third of the total 50-project East Doc Platform line-up. Furthermore, domestic projects are also singled out in the Czech Docs… Coming Soon 2018 sidebar, including Peter Kerekes’ other project, Bata, the First Global Entrepreneur of the World, Artemio Benki’s Fugue, Martin Páv’s Kibera Stories, Anna Kryvenko’s My Unknown Soldier and Francesco Montagner’s In the Name of Allah, on Jihadism in Bosnia, produced by Pavla Janoušková Kubečková of nutprodukce.